Vengeance

59 USS MICHIGAN

As Michigan hovered at one hundred fifty feet, several hundred yards from the minefield stretching across the Strait of Hormuz, Murray Wilson entered the guided missile submarine’s Battle Management Center, located aft of the Control Room. The former Navigation Center had been transformed during Michigan’s conversion from ballistic to guided missile submarine, and was now crammed with twenty-five consoles used for Tomahawk missile mission planning and overseeing SEAL operations.

Aboard Michigan during this deployment were two platoons of Navy SEALs, plus sixty tons of munitions stored in two of Michigan’s missile tubes: small arms, grenade launchers, limpet mines… anything a SEAL team might need. Stored inside each of the two Dry Deck Shelters attached to Michigan’s Missile Deck was a SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV), a mini-sub capable of transporting four SEALs, or various combinations of SEALs and equipment, to their destination.

Several Michigan crew members and SEALs were in the Battle Management Center, occupying consoles on the starboard side: Michigan’s Executive Officer and four department heads, plus Commander Jon Peters, the commanding officer of the SEAL detachment aboard Michigan. Also present were five other SEALs: Senior Chief Russ Burkhardt and Special Warfare Operators Michael Keller, Kurt Hacker, and Dave Narehood. Lieutenant Tracey Noviello, the officer-in-charge of one of the SEAL detachment’s two platoons, stood at the front of the Battle Management Center beside a sixty-inch plasma display mounted to the bulkhead.

Wilson settled into the lone vacant seat, beside Peters, and the SEAL commander nodded in Noviello’s direction.

Lieutenant Noviello began the mission brief, starting with a summary of the information provided in Michigan’s operational order.

“As you’re aware, Michigan has been tasked with devising a way to clear a path through the minefield that is preventing shipping from entering or leaving the Persian Gulf.”

Noviello went on to explain that the SEALs planned to use their SDVs to attach limpet mines, which were normally used to sabotage ships in port, to the mines instead.

“There are a few potential problems,” he said. “The first is that we have only two dozen limpets, and we don’t know how many mines we’ll have to destroy to clear a path large enough for a surface warship or submarine to pass through. The second issue is that the limpets have a magnetic base, which is used to attach them to a ship’s hull during a sabotage mission. The question is whether this magnetic base will set the mine off once it makes contact when we attach it.

“The initial intel from the mine-clearing community is that we should be fine. The types of mines employed in the scenario we’re looking at are typically set off by forceful contact or by the magnetic field of a large ship — or they could have both types of sensors. In either case, the mine shouldn’t be triggered by our limpets. Assuming the experts are correct and we don’t blow ourselves up, we’ll set the limpet timer and depart the minefield before it detonates.

“That’s the basic plan, but the first order of business is a recon mission through the minefield, to determine the type of mines we’re facing and to map out which mines need to be cleared. Senior Chief Burkhardt and Hacker will take one SDV, while Keller and Narehood will be in the other one. Subject to your questions, we plan to launch the SDVs as soon as we’re geared up and Michigan is ready.”

After a few questions and a short discussion, the mission brief concluded.

Thirty minutes later, Michael Keller and Dave Narehood, outfitted in standard dive gear for this mission, stepped through the circular hatch in the side of Missile Tube One. Keller shut the hatch and spun the handle, sealing the two men inside the seven-foot-diameter missile tube. Narehood climbed a steel ladder up two levels as Keller followed, entering the Dry Deck Shelter bathed in diffuse red light.

The Dry Deck Shelter was a conglomeration of three separate chambers: a spherical hyperbaric chamber at the forward end to treat injured divers, a spherical transfer trunk in the middle, which Keller and Narehood had entered, and a long cylindrical hangar section containing the SEAL Delivery Vehicle, a black mini-sub resembling a fat torpedo — twenty-two feet long by six feet in diameter. The hangar was divided into two sections by a Plexiglas shield dropping halfway down from the top of the hangar, with the SDV on one side and controls for operating the hangar on the other side.

Narehood stepped into the hangar, which was manned by five Navy divers: one on the forward side of the Plexiglas shield to operate the controls, and four divers in scuba gear on the other side. Keller sealed the hatch behind him, then the two SEALs ducked under the Plexiglas shield, stopping at the forward end of the SDV, which was loaded nose first into the Dry Deck Shelter. The SDV had two seating areas, one in front of the other, each capable of carrying two persons. The back seat would be empty this time, but would carry a limpet once they began clearing a path through the minefield.

After donning their fins and face masks, the two men climbed into the front seat of the SDV. Keller manipulated the controls and a contour of the Strait of Hormuz appeared on the navigation display. He rendered the okay hand signal to the diver on the other side of the Plexiglas shield. Water surged into the hangar, gushing up from vents beneath them. The DDS was soon flooded except for a pocket of air on the other side of the Plexiglas shield, where the Navy diver operated the Dry Deck Shelter. There was a faint rumbling as the circular hatch at the end of the shelter opened, and two divers on each side of the SDV glided toward the chamber opening with a kick of their fins.

The divers pulled rails out onto the submarine’s missile deck, and the SDV was extracted from the hangar. Keller manipulated the controls and the SDV’s propeller started spinning. The submersible rose slowly, as did the second SDV after emerging from the other Dry Deck Shelter. Both SDVs moved forward, passing above the shelters and along each side of Michigan’s sail, cruising over the submarine’s bow into the dark water ahead.

Not long thereafter, several mines materialized in the murky water. Keller eased back on the throttle and the mini-sub slowed as it approached the nearest one, while the second SDV, piloted by Burkhardt, stopped to examine the next closest mine. Each was a sphere three feet in diameter with a dozen contact spikes sticking out from the its spherical surface, attached to an anchor chain disappearing into the darkness below. Above and beneath them, Keller spotted more dark spheres; mines had been anchored to at least three different depths in this layer.

After Keller logged the first mine’s location and depth, he adjusted the SDV’s buoyancy, descending to the mine below it to determine and log its depth. Beside him, the second SDV did the same. It was going to take a while to map a path through the minefield, much less destroy each mine one by one.